


Blankets are the Devil

by YoureMySunshine



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 5+1 Things, Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley can't see under blankets, Crowley the Starmaker, Forehead Kisses, Inspired by Ace Good Omens Discord, M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:47:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22324315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YoureMySunshine/pseuds/YoureMySunshine
Summary: 5 times Crowley couldn’t see underneath blankets and one time he could
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 145





	Blankets are the Devil

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Being an Account of Various Events that Occur After (and sometimes before) the Apocalypse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19770655) by [lucky_spike](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucky_spike/pseuds/lucky_spike). 



**1) Aziraphale first noticed it one Halloween.**

Neither Aziraphale nor Crowley ventured out on Halloween anymore. Crowley used to go out and encourage mischief several thousand years ago. But at this point, Halloween was so much a part of the normal culture that there was scarcely anything for a demon to do. Not that he’d done much in the old days - encouraging drunken humans to do stupid things hardly needed a demon’s help. 

Aziraphale also used to go out on Halloween. He tried to encourage gift-giving and friendly competition about costumes (Gabriel had been quite particular about that point). In the end, his desire for sweets had led to him just creating the tradition of candy-giving as a last-ditch way to stay home. It worked, and now he would sit in the bookstore each Halloween with a bucket of candy to hand out to any child that knocked on the door. 

Few children tended to trick-or-treat in _Soho_ , but enough did that Aziraphale didn’t feel guilty purchasing a large box of very nice chocolates for ~~himself~~ the children to eat. And if his shop looked uninviting and dark, and he ended up eating most of the chocolates himself - well, he had _tried_ , hadn’t he? 

On this Halloween, the first after the world had ended, Crowley was sitting in the shop with him. They had a bottle of wine open, but it was still so early in the night that they were on their first glass. 

The doorbell tried to ring, but Aziraphale had conveniently forgotten to make the miracle that kept the 18th-century wires working stay active tonight. However, the children on the other side of the door knew that there was good candy inside, and the oldest started to knock on the door, shouting “trick or treat!”

With a sigh, Aziraphale got up, opened the door, and deposited a piece of candy in all five of the children’s baskets. He shooed them away, and they ran off, laughing. 

Crowley laughed, and said, “You know, I put down Halloween as a day from Hell on my paperwork. Even once you got it so there was just candy being passed out, I called it passing out sugar to rot teeth and lower health standards.”

Aziraphale glared, and said, “Then you should hand out candy to the next batch, if they come. It’ll be right up your alley.”

Crowley toasted Aziraphale, “Sure, angel, with all the many kids you get here with your friendly and welcoming shop.”

Twenty minutes later, however, a group of children knocked on the door. Crowley got up with a groan, grabbed the bucket, and swaggered over to the door. When he opened it, he looked at the group of three trick-or-treaters. 

“My, my, what lovely little capitalists you all are,” Crowley said, “all those delightful store-bought costumes! Now you, little cowgirl, get some candy, and tiny cat thing, and you-” Crowley broke off. He peered down suspiciously at the tiny child clad in a bedsheet, who was holding out their orange bucket for a piece of candy. Crowley looked around, looked at the bucket, and said, “You get two pieces for an excellent costume. No clue how you did it.” Dumping two pieces into the bucket, he slammed the door after the children’s squeaks of thanks. 

“Crowley, my dear, that was rather cruel,” said Aziraphale. “A ghost is a perfectly normal costume; you shouldn’t make fun of the child.”

“Angel, that’s a usual costume?” Crowley seemed surprised. “How do they do it? How do they make children invisible? Safety hazard, that is.” 

Aziraphale peered around the shop, looking for the bottles that Crowley had clearly drunk when Aziraphale wasn’t watching. There weren’t any. 

Aziraphale asked, “My dear, you drape a sheet over the child. Then it’s a ‘ghost.’ Could you not see the sheet?”

Crowley groaned and fell into his seat. Taking a large sip of wine, he groused, “Why do the humans keep doing that! Draping themselves in sheets, once they’re covered, _I can’t see them!_ ”

It was a mysterious element of humanity. Because children believed so strongly that they were safe from demons under the bed as long as they were covered by a blanket, Crowley _couldn’t see what was under blankets._

“Angel, I’ve been keeping this secret for a while,” Crowley said after explaining, “It’s embarrassing.” 

“Of course,” said the perfectly-nice angel, who would never ever consider using such a thing to his advantage. 

**2) One week later Crowley left his flat in a huff.**

“Aziraphale!” yelled Crowley, throwing open the bookshop door with such force it bounced off the wall. “WHERE DID YOU PUT MY PLANTS?”

Crowley's snake-like eyes scanned the bookshop. No angel. Where could he be? Crowley prowled through the shelves, looking for any hints. After checking that the register was, indeed, unoccupied, he stormed out, deciding to check the sushi place down the street. 

As soon as Crowley walked out, Aziraphale lifted the blanket off of his head and got up from the register. He walked over to the wall, and removed another blanket covering Crowley's plants. 

“Now I can tell you about how pretty your leaves are, yes they are, and how well taken care of you look,” he murmured, stroking a verdant leaf.

**3) Aziraphale poked his head into Crowley’s study in their South Downs cottage.**

“Crowley dear, I did laundry, yours are on the bed,” Aziraphale said. Aziraphale bustled off down the hall to continue checking for misprints in the latest Oscar Wilde reprint. 

Crowley got up and sauntered into their room. He was only wearing a bathrobe, as all of his clothes had been splashed with mud while working in the garden. Although it would be easy to clean them or make more with a miracle, they were trying out laundry “the human way” this week (if the human way involved putting clothes into a washing machine and immediately removing them, fully clean, dry, and fluffy).

Crowley picked up the pile of folded shirts and stuffed them into a drawer in his new dresser (making dressers “the human way” had been their task last week. The wood had refused to be cut straight no matter how he threatened, but they decided that painting the dresser with a miracle didn’t count. This covered up all manner of sins). He shrugged into a newly clean shirt, and turned to put on pants as well. No pants lay on the bed, which was covered by a throw blanket. 

After an hour of fruitless searching, Crowley stormed into Aziraphales’ office, and demanded, “Angel, where are my pants?”

**4) Crowley didn’t know why he had agreed to this.**

He had been willing with Warlock, but Warlock was only seven the last time he had wanted to play “Hide and Seek” with Nanny. This group was eleven, which seemed old enough to want to play more rambunctious games, or video games. But the Them had begged, and Crowley was counting. 

“Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred!” Crowley opened his eyes, and looked around. He had promised to not use any miracles to find the Them quickly, but it was a small house and yard. 

How hard could it be to find them?

He prowled into the kitchen, where Wensleydale was hiding behind the table. The boy attempted to slide around the opposite side, so Crowley never saw him, but Crowley easily picked up the slight squeak of shoes on linoleum. He tapped Wensleydale on the head and kept looking. 

Pepper was hiding in a closet, and Adam had a very good hiding spot up a tree, but was given away by Dog barking at his master. Crowley grinned, having caught three-fourths of his charges fairly quickly. He started looking in the other rooms for kid number four, what’s-his-name-is-always-dirty, with the rest of the Them trailing behind him. 

Crowley looked into the bathroom, the living room, and checked out the kitchen again. Finally, after Adam told him that his bedroom was a normal spot to hide, he opened the door to Adam's room. 

“Oh, come on,” said Pepper, gesturing to the lump of blankets sitting on the bed, “did he even _try_?”

Crowley looked around the room. He didn't see anything. He would normally sniff the child out at this point, but he had promised to use as-human-as-possible senses, and was fairly sure humans couldn’t smell people - even ones as filthy as what’s-his-name. 

Adam looked at Crowley, who was staring very hard at his chair, and circling the desk to peer underneath it. He didn't so much as glance at the slightly-moving bundle of blankets four feet from him. 

Adam whispered to Wensleydale, “Do you think he's humoring us?” Crowley, looking a little lost, was checking the crack between the wall and the desk. Too small for a human, but a perfect size for a small snake, which Crowley was now checking for. 

Wensleydale pushed up his glasses and whispered back, “Actually, I think he can't see him.”

Crowley lay on the floor to check under the bed. Dog ran up and licked his face. Crowley shooed him away, and started walking towards the doorway. However, dog began licking Brian’s feet, and Crowley heard the resulting giggle. He turned to see Brian pull a sweaty blanket away from his face, and Crowley jumped as though he were a cat and Brian was a cucumber placed in front of him. 

“Do you want to come down from there?” asked Adam, peering at the ceiling. 

“No,” sulked the demon, huddled in the corner of the ceiling, “hiding under blankets, you kids don’t play fair.”

**5) Crowley and Aziraphale had been living in their cottage for a few months now.**

This was just enough time for the little old ladies of the village to adopt Aziraphale as one of their own. “It’s obvious,” said Hilda, “that he really is one of us, we have similar interests, and if we meet at his place then we can watch that fine young man of his garden!”

The other ladies agreed, and so Aziraphale began hosting them twice a month for a “Stitch and Bitch” session. Aziraphale had tried to knit, but his creations always ended up somehow misshapen. He eventually gave up on the whole prospect, and worked on embroidery during the meetings.*

*Aziraphale had become very skilled at embroidery when he was undercover as a Nun in the fourteenth century. It was a miserable time, with little to pass the time, as Crowley couldn’t set foot on the convent’s holy ground, and Aziraphale wasn’t permitted to leave

One day, Crowley sauntered into the meeting holding a basket of apples he had picked. The ladies saw Aziraphales’ furious blush, and quickly wheedled out a story of “Oh, we met under an apple tree, it’s a, uh, horribly long story…” which they found enchanting. 

Hilda convinced Crowley to stay in while they all ate his apples, and he joined in on the teasing of Aziraphale fairly quickly. After this happened in several meetings, the ladies convinced him to learn crocheting. Gertrude insisted, “If you’re going to be at the stitch-and-bitch, you have to do some kind of stitching!”

Crowley quickly picked the process up, and began making a scarf. Because he wanted to have the stripes going lengthwise, he created a long chain and began building up rows. 

However, as happens to all crocheters, he quickly lost track of where he was in the scarf and kept going long past the point where he should. He was working on the scarf while listening to Aziraphale read aloud, and both lost track of time. Aziraphale eventually finished reading “Angels and Demons,” and they had a grand time discussing the book’s myriad of flaws**. The whole while, Crowley’s hands worked, stitching and stitching. 

**This was inspired by lucky_spike who wrote about [Aziraphale and Crowley reading the Da Vinci Code.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19770655/chapters/50520140)

“Good heavens, my dear boy, your scarf has turned into a blanket!” said Aziraphale, looking over at Crowley when he put the book down. 

Crowley looked down at his lap… and didn’t see his lap at all. His legs and the chair had vanished from his sight. “BUGGER!” he yelled, attempting to wrangle his way out of the blanket. 

**+1) Aziraphale and Crowley were sitting on a blanket while stargazing.**

“...then you take your elements, your divine firmament, a bit of miracle, and once your calculations are done, you sing it into being,” Crowley explained. 

“You sang the stars into being, my dear?” asked Aziraphale. He had heard this story many times, but it was always a treat to listen to Crowley discuss his passion.

“You know I did, angel,” Crowley said. 

Aziraphale leaned over and pressed a kiss to Crowley’s forehead. “They’re beautiful, my dear boy,” he murmured. 

Normally, this was where this conversation would end. They would sit and look at the sky, holding hands, until the sun rose. This time, however, Crowley spoke up once more. 

Crowley pointed to the sky, saying, “And there’s the herdsman. Boötes, they call it now. Figuring out how Arcturus would react with the other stars was a bit of a nightmare, to be honest. But it’s so bright now, I’d say the work was worth it.”

Aziraphale sat up from where he had been leaning. He excitedly said, “You mean you hung the stars in place, as well as creating them? How does that work?”

“Of course, angel, the people who make the stars know best how to pin them down. That system was my responsibility," Crowley answered. “I guess the best way to describe it is like, sewing something onto some cloth. The cloth is going to start draping strangely if it’s heavy, and you have to be careful to not pull on only warp or only weft,” Crowley made a confusing gesture with his hands to try to illustrate.

Aziraphale looked lost. “I’m sorry, my dear, but I’m not sure what you mean,” he said. 

Crowley looked down at the blanket they were sitting on. “Get up,” he said, pulling on the blanket until they were both off of it. 

“I’ll get wet!” argued Aziraphale, sitting gingerly on the ground. 

“Come on, sit here, you big baby,” ordered Crowley, holding the blanket up in front of him. “Now you see how this blanket is woven, with threads going up-down and other threads going left-right? So if I pin this-” he snapped and grabbed a broach from thin air (which was definitely not pulled from the desk of the wife of a certain UK politician that Crowley had disdain for), “-if I pin this right here, and only attach it to the left-right threads, the blanket starts to sag.”

Sure enough, as Crowley pinned the broach on, some of the threads started to pull loose. 

Crowley continued, “Now this is even worse in space because space is always moving, so it’s more like _this_.” 

Crowley held the blanket above their heads and swung it around a little. The broach, sure enough, had pulled a thread loose and was causing the blanket to sag over them. 

“Do you see?” Crowley asked, turning toward his angel. 

To his surprise, Aziraphale was looking at him, not at the broach. Aziraphale said, “I see what you mean dear - do _you_ see?”

Looking around, Crowley saw what Aziraphale meant. They were now sitting under the blanket, and Crowley could see Aziraphale. He could see his eyes, the little crease in his face when he smiled, and the fussy, manicured hand holding the blanket up with him. 

“I see perfectly well,” Crowley whispered, leaning in.

No one else was around in this field, but even if they were, they would have seen only a lump of blankets sitting on the ground, with a hidden angel and demon inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the Ace Good Omens Discord for the idea and the encouragement. Thank you particularly to Kedreeva for the encouragement of the live write, and lucky_spike for the glorious idea about the Da Vinci Code.


End file.
